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Ugh, when I bought the thing, I thought the smell was coming from the ratty ass old dude who was standing near me. Guess I learned my lesson for blaming old white trashy people for bad cigarette smells.

I'm gonna put it in a bag with some baking soda and see if that helps.

Tobacco smoke is deadly for books, the soft fibers in the paper soak it up and there's not much you can do to get the stink completely out. It's a killer for values, an otherwise valuable book that has smoke damage is devalued by it often to the point of worthlessness.

Keb wrote:Ugh, when I bought the thing, I thought the smell was coming from the ratty ass old dude who was standing near me. Guess I learned my lesson for blaming old white trashy people for bad cigarette smells.

I'm gonna put it in a bag with some baking soda and see if that helps.

Dryer sheets a good idea, but chances are good it's toast unless you want to invest in a recovery process that costs a lot more than the book is worth. We had a fire at the library and even though the collection wasn't burned, the smoke saturation was incredible. It took months of putting them in special ozone chambers to get them to the point where the public could use them, and the smell never went away entirely. Cigarette smoke is even worse, imo.

Log-Man wrote:Dryer sheets a good idea, but chances are good it's toast unless you want to invest in a recovery process that costs a lot more than the book is worth. We had a fire at the library and even though the collection wasn't burned, the smoke saturation was incredible. It took months of putting them in special ozone chambers to get them to the point where the public could use them, and the smell never went away entirely. Cigarette smoke is even worse, imo.

Yeah, if you look at my post above that one I agree it's nearly hopeless. He might be able to get it to a more tolerable level of odor is all. Like I said, I would have returned it. Passing off smoky books is a real no-no for booksellers.

Many amazing book collections have been made into junk by being stored in a smoke-filled room.

Agree with the others, the stank doesn't go away. I collect a lot of large hardcovers books on various topics. One is an encyclopedia of American cars I read a lot. Horrible smoke reek. I have to open it to a page and let it air out a bit before I can handle it. Unless it is a rarer book that would be expensive to replace, chuck it or donate to Goodwill.